


The Wrong Questions

by objectlesson



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 13:07:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/622459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A list of reasons why it hasn’t happened yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wrong Questions

**Author's Note:**

> I usually write from Kirk’s POV, because I love and relate to him.Of course, this might have to do with my fascination/attraction to characters like Spock, who deny themselves carnal pleasures. Or, characters I assume deny themselves. It occurred to me at some point how unfair it is for me, and for Jim Kirk, to make those assumptions, however. So I wrote this story. It’s my favorite TOS story I’ve ever written, I think. I don’t own them and this never happened.

1\. The first is that lying does not come naturally to Spock, and this can give people the wrong idea. 

The room smells biting and chemical with alcohol, a smell that always puts Spock on edge. People are celebrating. It’s an earth holiday and they’ve just successfully finished a mission, so he’s standing in the corner with his hands clasped behind his back, there because he knows distantly that that the Captain wants him there, even if, currently, the Captain is leaning in very closely next to a young ensign with dark hair that falls in ringlets across her flushed cheeks. 

Spock knows what may happen between the ensign and Kirk tonight, though lately Kirk’s interactions with women seem to be full of much talk, much hot air, but little else. Still, Spock knows, and must consider this outcome a possibility. Spock knows that, right now, Kirk and this ensign are most likely talking about sex. 

He moves forward onto the balls of his feet, and then rocks back onto his heels, wishing it were appropriate to return to his quarters. There is nothing for him here, and even if there were, it has been decided by forces outside of himself that there is not. He remains, mired in discomfort. 

There are times that Spock tries not to hear the Captain’s voice ring above the others. He reminds himself that they are off duty, that he is not following orders in this moment so there is no need to be so aware of the tonal quality and sound of one human’s voice, but these attempts are always futile. There’s a loud, constant chatter in the rec room fashioned from many drunken voices all slurred together, and Kirk is most definitely not the loudest nor the clearest in the bunch, but his is the one that Spock hears from his corner, as if it is something he is made for. 

“Now, you must understand, I did not intend, in any way, to even acknowledge this women let alone enter into a marriage ceremony with her. She was the chief’s primary wife, you see, so I was not even _considering_ such things. However, customs in this particular village in Beta Phi consist of very, ah, how shall we put it, _suggestive_ meanings around eye contact, so before I even _understood_ what was happening, she was wrapping my arm in the ceremonial silver union rope...” Kirk is saying, and he is met with laughter. That of the ensign, and everyone else at the table. 

Spock has heard this story before, told in this tone, to other pretty girls, and told in other tones to different audiences in efforts to render different reactions. He, of course, was there for this particular mishap on Beta Phi, and knows the reality free of the fiction, knows what happened without Kirk’s embellishment. There are many things like this story, where Spock holds both the truth, and the illusion of Jim Kirk. 

Spock tries hard to focus on some other conversation in the room, just as an experiment, just as a puzzle for his brain. It’s always good to test one’s capabilities, Spock believes, to attempt to a see illusions for what they are, only to shift back into seeing the trick. He does this with Kirk’s voice, but the reality is much harder to maintain than the illusion, and it’s not long before he very distinctly hears something solid amongst so much vapor and water. 

“I, of course, was very apologetic. I let her down, lightly...it was difficult, I must admit, she was a very beautiful lady.” There is the din of too-loud laughter again, a shift of bodies in polycarbonate rec room chairs. “Mr. Spock can attest to such things, he was there to witness this unfortunate incident. Wasn’t she beautiful, Mr. Spock?” 

Spock turns at the sound of his name, eyebrows raised as several pairs of drink-blurred, mirthful gazes fall on him. At the center of all this is Jim Kirk, mouth parted and pressed against the rim of his shot glass, a fiery blackness to his eyes which are wide, blown apart, terrifying. Spock realizes this is a test of his humanity, as many things Kirk says to him are. This is something Kirk does, something infuriating, inescapable. In asking Spock’s opinion, Kirk is also saying _tell us you didn’t find her beautiful, Spock, because you do not see beauty. Because you may seem human, in moments where I believe I can have you, but then I always convince myself of the truth, which is that you cannot love. You did not find her beautiful, just as you will never find me beautiful. So here, we are going to laugh about it, so that I can swallow._

Spock clears his throat, and fixes his gaze on the daring, drowning eyes of Jim Kirk. “I cannot comment on her beauty, Captain, for I was more occupied with the peculiar cultural nature of Betaian mating rituals,” Spock answers honestly, because of course, Kirk is asking the wrong question, as he always does. 

Everyone at the table explodes in expectant laughter, and Spock looks down, eyebrows still raised, distantly weary of being the punchline to yet another joke. 

“Of course, of course, Mr. Spock. You are not the one I should ask about matters of mating, unless it is some empirically driven question, correct?” Kirk says, and he’s smiling. It’s a self-deprecating smile, but Spock is sure that he is the only one who notices that. 

“Perhaps,” he says, because lying doesn’t come naturally, and half-truths are best responded to with maybes. 

“I thought so,” Kirk says, and downs the last of his drink. 

 

2\. The second is that Kirk always asks the wrong questions. 

It forces Spock into a corner, backs him up until he must respond calculatedly, logically, because there is no other way for Spock to respond. If Kirk had asked _do you find me beautiful?_ Spock would have answered inevitably with the truth, which is _insufferably_. 

However, Kirk never asks about himself in regards to love, or sex, or beauty. He only asks _generally_ about such things, in which case, Spock is indifferent, and uncomfortable. Spock is unsure of why Kirk uses generalities to talk about specifics; after all, it always seems very clear to Spock that when Kirk brings up sex generally, he is bringing it up for the sole purpose of testing Spock’s response to it, so that he can estimate the likelihood of Spock’s interest in sex, specifically, with himself. 

Spock is not indifferent, or uncomfortable, with this specific, at all. 

Perhaps he was, when the idea first began to surface within his mind. But that was close to a year ago, before he realized how illogical it was to force himself to expend enormous amounts of energy to make himself stop wanting something he deeply, basely wanted. He is still ashamed of his flesh, ashamed of the fact his body is capable of growing hot and itchy and wanting beneath his sheets, so much so that he has to force a hand under his clothes and touch himself until the ache passes and he spasms hot and silk-wet into his palm. However, hating his flesh is the same as hating his humanity, which is a chronic condition born of his blood. It is not the same as wanting Jim Kirk. 

It is the opposite of wanting to fuck Jim Kirk, in some strange demonstration of logic. Spock thinks he could escape the infernal prison of his own flesh, were he to touch Jim Kirk’s.

Sex in general is not appealing. It’s messy, and filthy, and for the purpose of reproduction which is illogical in an overpopulated, overrun overworked overfed overfarmed world. However, sex with Kirk, in Spock’s understanding, is salvation. Self contained and pure and based in the most logical of all things: need. Need does not have a source because it is need. It exists purely, and organically, and self evidently. 

Spock’s made peace with wanting Jim Kirk. He’s made peace with this one, fractional element of his humanity. 

He does not think that Jim Kirk has made peace with this same fraction, however. 

Jim Kirk is too brilliantly, blindly buried in self-pity to recognize that it is his _own_ cognition of his own creation that Spock cannot love. Spock has never told Kirk that he cannot love, Kirk has decided that he cannot, to preserve his selfhood, to protect against the pain of loving someone that is not human. If he were to ask the right questions, Spock would tell the truth: that he does love, in spite of himself. That he loves so deeply and truly and purely that he’s ceased thinking about love as a feeling, and discovered that it is a need. 

Few of Spock’s crew mates view him with any complexity. To them he is a computer, pure logic and wires and robotics. They don’t know that he struggles against himself, that he is cleaved in half by his own biology, and that even if he was purely Vulcan, he still might fight this fight. Kirk is the only one who seems to understand that there is any depth to Spock. Spock knows this from nights spent playing chess in the captain’s quarters, talking so late Kirk’s ability to discern between what was professional and what was not became blurred, messy. _It must be so very difficult for you to live between two worlds as you do, Spock. All men, myself included, struggle with different aspects of his selfhood, but you, you actually are halved in a way we are not. I know most of us just assume you are operate as a Vulcan because the blood is there, but...correct me if I’m wrong, Spock...I think you struggle with your other half more than you let on._ And, as easy as that, Spock knew that Jim Kirk saw him as more than a machine, more than a Vulcan, more than a man. He saw that even if Spock denied it, there was feeling, as visceral and strong and real as any humans, surging beneath his skin like green blood. 

Kirk, more than anyone else, sees. Yet still, he forgets this one part of him. He has the capability to believe that Spock can feel anything else, suffer pain and joy and sympathy and fear, yet he does not ever consider the possibility that Spock can, and does, suffer through love, and desire. 

Spock knows it is because Jim Kirk is human, and it would be too painful for him were he to be wrong. 

The third is that Kirk is too self-absorbed, self-blaming, and arrogant to observe situations objectively. 

Kirk and Spock are in a turbolift leaving sick bay, and Dr. Mcoy has recently accused Spock of being cold-hearted, unfeeling, and a machine. Such things happen fairly regularly, though this time in particular is the result of Spock not responding to the recent death of an injured crewman in the way Dr. Mcoy would have preferred. It’s quiet in the turbolift save for the humming and whirring of the ship, and Spock is only half aware of the Captain’s proximity to him until Kirk speaks. 

“What’s troubling you, Mr. Spock?” He says, moving his body between Spock and the exit.

Spock raises an eyebrow, wondering briefly what about his silence indicated unrest. He knows very well that it could be a mere projection of Kirk’s own distress at losing the yeoman in sick bay, but he searches himself anyway, combing through the uneasy fit of his body with loose fingers to test for anything that seems more unsettled than usual. “I find it confusing that Dr. Mcoy appears to believe that if one does not express grief, that one does not find death regrettable.” Spock is not satisfied with his word choice, because it does not express exactly what he means, but he’s found that Kirk fills in the gaps made by language better than most people he has encountered. 

“You must not mind Bones,” Kirk says, hand sweeping through the air in front of them in a dismissive gesture. “He does not understand that there are many, just as effective means of expressing oneself. His understanding is limited to his own experience...meaning, emotional responses are his only truth.” 

Spock’s brow manages to climb a millimeter, and he thinks how very interesting it is that Kirk is speaking about Dr. Mcoy as if he himself does not suffer from the same ailment. “I am always struck by the human tendency to operate as if one’s own experience is the only and true experience. It seems that Dr. Mcoy thinks I lack empathy, however, he is the one who cannot imagine what it must be like to experience things from a nonhuman standpoint,” Spock says carefully. 

Kirk cocks his head, a strange smile quirking his lips up ever so slightly in the corners. “Your insights never fail to amuse and amaze me, Mr. Spock.” 

“And humans, never fail to confuse and amaze me,” he responds. 

Kirk nods, as if it was the response he was expecting. There is a moment when Spock wants to say something else, add a clause to his sentence along the lines of _and that is why I continue to study them_ or _this is the reason I surround myself in human company_. In this moment, he does not want Kirk to misconstrue his comment as critical statement about humanity, because that is not how he intends it; he rarely uses the word _amaze_ unless he truly means the sense of awe that it connotes. However, Spock stops short in favor of saying nothing, because he knows from experience that there is little he can do to shake Kirk’s belief that Spock does not see beauty in humanity. 

Spock doesn’t fight, because although Kirk’s assumptions are incorrect, they are very logical.

Spock resents his own humanity, so it is logical for Kirk to assume that he resents humanity generally. Spock rarely expresses anything aside from discomfort and disinterest when presented with the topics of love or desire, so it is logical for Kirk to assume that his love and desire cannot be returned by Spock. 

Contrary to popular belief, logic is not everything to Spock. Logic is valuable, and allowed to predict unknowns with some level of accuracy. However, the most logical way to obtain information is not assumption. Kirk is making logical inferences, but he has the mean to see truth without assumption, but he does not ask. He is afraid of the possibility that he’s right, and that Spock does not feel love, and does not desire. Kirk has told himself the fiction of his own forever loneliness, a future of loving a man who refuses to feel, so many times over that he does not even realize that it has become internalized as truth. He does not recognize how hard Spock tries to tell him, to show him. Kirk is consumed by his story, and can’t see outside when it’s dark. 

Spock waits for Kirk to say something else, waits for a question he knows will never come. _You see me_ , he thinks. _But you fear the risk it would take to see all of me._

The turbolift reaches the bridge, and they exit in silence. 

The fourth is that innocence is not the same as purging feeling, but Spock can’t seem to explain this well. 

Children are innocent, which is why they do not recognize their flesh. They neither resent nor admire it because it’s not included in their consciousness. The moment children _become_ aware of flesh, aware that it is a thing that exists, grows warm, can be cut open, can bleed, can sweat, can come, can _feel_ , they lose their innocence. They can choose to loathe it or to tolerate it, but it will alway be there, and they have fallen. 

It’s been a very long time since Spock has been innocent. He suspects that Kirk does not know this. 

Kirk does not hate his own body, so he cannot understand. It’s not that he doesn’t self-hate, on the contrary, Spock often watches the Captain forever fall short of his own impossible standards, unable to measure up to the bar he has set to high for himself. Instead of blaming his body, blaming his blood, as Spock is inclined to do, Kirk moves in the other direction. He works to perfect his body, ensuring that he is as fit and powerful and agile as his age and capabilities will allow him. He seduces women he knows are too good for him, he picks fights with men twice his size. He cannot change the inside, so he strives for impossible perfection of the exterior. 

Few people recognize that these are the indicators that Jim Kirk feels inadequate and loves no part of himself. Spock is one of these few people. 

Because Kirk views the body as an escape rather than a prison, and because he is self-absorbed and folly in the way all humans are, he fails to comprehend how Spock’s inability to accept his own body is the function of anything but innocence. He believes Spock doesn’t think of flesh, doesn’t think of sex, because Spock tries not to think of his own body. 

Spock doesn’t know how to explain to Kirk that he is wrong about these things. 

The reality is, of course, that Spock _does_ think of sex, but of Kirk’s flesh, and not his own. He thinks of this often, Kirk’s scalding, sweating human skin as this molten freedom to drown in, escaping the confines of his own bones caught between two worlds, too-brittle and too-unbreakable all at once. When the pain of existing in his imperfect, inhuman, invulcan self becomes too much, that is the image Spock isolates and meditates on: his own hands sliding up Jim Kirk’s chest and locking behind his neck, his own lips frayed and battered beneath teeth and his selfhood dissolving into something shared, something compounded. 

Spock isn’t afraid of taking Kirk, nor is he afraid of losing himself to Kirk. He is only afraid that Kirk is too afraid being taken, or getting lost to and in this force he views as innocent. 

The fifth is that all of these are true. Kirk is the way he is. But on top of that, Spock is the way _he_ is, as well. 

Things that come easily to humans come less easily to Spock, but he makes attempts anyway. Desperate, invisible, perhaps folly, attempts to tell the Captain he is wrong about what he has decided. He tries to demonstrate to Kirk, as frequently as he can, how _differently_ he regards Kirk in comparison to every other living soul on the ship and outside of it. However, the gestures of a Vulcan seem smaller than that of a human. When Spock tries, his efforts are viewed as mere glimpses of humanity, of compassion, not as quiet declarations of love. 

Sometimes it occurs to Spock that he should tell the Captain the truth. After all, it’s logical to solve to a problem of misconception by explanation. Spock knows this. But knowing he should explain, and finding the words and the will to do so are completely different matters. 

First off, he does not know what to say. _You are wrong, Jim. I am not innocent. I touch myself at night just as you do, and I think of you just as I know you think of me. I find most things repulsive when in relation to my flesh, but not you. Never you. You are wrong about love, as well. I do love, and it is you I love._

Even by earth standards, such a tide of emotion would be regarded as too much. However, it is the truth, and Spock can only tell truths. He cannot think of any appropriate way to twist language to effectively say what he means, and remain truthful. There are human tricks, things he can learn in theory but never apply. 

Secondly, there is the matter of Kirk’s reciprocity.

Spock would be certain, but certainty is illogical. He knows that the only place certainty is applicable is in mathematical proofs, and Jim Kirk’s behavior, his brilliant mind coiled tight and sunshine bright like a copper spring, are a far cry away from mathematics. 

Everything Kirk does suggests that he, too, would find salvation on the cool expanse of Spock’s skin. Everything Kirk does suggests that he _wants_ it. It would be logical to assume that this is the case. Spock has studied the way Kirk regards his other crew mates, even his other , _friends_ , and Kirk does not look upon them with the same roving, too-dark gaze which he saves the Spock, the one where his eyes are smiling-at-the-corners in combined awe and distant sadness, explosive in their blackness like night glazed in gold. 

He touches nearly everyone, but not with the lingering firmness with which he touches Spock. He does not seek out any other crewman’s company with the same persistent, singleminded longing as he seeks out Spock. 

It would seem logical to conclude that Jim Kirk would appreciate having his fiction shattered by Spock’s truth. _But_. But what if Spock is wrong. It has taken so many years worth of complicated reasoning and conquering for Spock to arrive at this place in his life now, where he allows himself to admit that he loves and yearns and that is not something he can change without killing himself. The possibility, however slight, that he would not be able to drown his self-loathing in the absolving sea of Jim Kirk’s desire for him seems inexcusable. 

If Kirk asked the right question, he would answer. If Kirk _noticed how hard he tries_ , he would lay everything at his feet and let the truth come spilling forth, surging like river water, like blood from a wound. 

If the opportunity arose. 

When it does, he is not expecting things to carry out as they do. 

Because of the tight, primitive, and limited lodging options on Sigma Centuri IV, the malfunctioning transporter, and the cultural implication of turning down hospitality, Kirk and Spock are sharing quarters tonight. When the Sigma Centurians offer the crude, thatch-roofed hut for the Captain and his first, Kirk suggests in a rare moment of lost composure that it will be unnecessary, and he’ll sleep outside. 

But Spock raises an eyebrow, gaze scanning across Kirk’s body while his own hands folded together behind his back. “That is illogical, Captain. The Sigma Centurians are offering us both shelter and suitable sleeping arrangements for the night. There is no reason why you should turn down such an offer.” 

In the face of such logic, Captain Kirk bows, buckles, then agrees, because both of them know his refusal is driven by something as irrational as emotion. “You would not be more comfortable in your own quarters, Mr. Spock?” 

Spock raises an eyebrow, because this is nearly the right question for Kirk to ask. “Negative, Captain,” he replies in a low voice, an Kirk stares at him calculatedly for a long time after that. 

The suns are setting, two citrus-bright orange spheres sinking below the black, craggy, horizon line. The Captain is standing at the crude window of the hut, his shoulder bunched with a visible tension. 

Spock watches, wonders, waits. His hands are clasped in front of him, and he admires Kirk’s back, the tenuous cords of muscle strained just under gold regulation fabric, the pulsing line of his neck disappearing beneath the collar of his green dress uniform. “Permission to speak freely, Captain?” Spock says in a hoarse voice. 

Kirk spins around on his heels, chin inclined and eyes wide, like he’s on guard. “Granted.” 

Spock takes a deep breath, then lets it out, paralyzed by the inadequacy of language, and all that there is to say that he cannot say. “I apologize if this appears unrelated to prior discussion, or if the answer is a private matter you’d wish to keep to yourself. However, it seems to me that you are...uncomfortable with the sleeping arrangements the Centurians have provided for us this evening.” 

Kirk barks. It is too harsh to be a laugh. “I’m that obvious,” he says quietly and too himself, but still loud enough for Spock to hear. It is the kind of side comment that adults say in the presence of children, where they don’t feel the need to conceal their words completely, because they are sure that the child will not understand the implication. It indicates that Kirk is sure Spock won’t understand his implication, and of course, he is sure as a fool is sure. Louder, he adds, “It is not ideal, no. But it is not a matter either of us can change, Spock, so please, do not worry yourself. Not that Vulcans worry.” 

There is that self-recriminating note in Kirk’s voice, the one that mean’s he’s writing fiction, and believing it. Something clenches in Spock’s chest and wishes that he could touch the Captain. 

“I can assure you, they do.” 

“That’s a relief,” Kirk sighs, and sits down on the edge of the bed they are expected to share tonight. It’s nothing but a slightly elevated wide, wooden frame with a woven blanket and a heap of skins at the foot. Kirk puts his head in his hands, and sighs. “It’s been an interesting day, Spock. Please forgive me if I seem out of sorts.” 

“Indeed.” The day has been interesting, but Spock does not want to talk about it, nor does he want to forgive Kirk. He wants to talk about _now_ , and tonight, and that space that they may occupy tonight, if he can keep speaking without retreating into the comfort and familiarity of assumed apathy. “Captain, what exactly about the arrangements are ‘not ideal,’ if I may ask?” 

Kirk looks up abruptly. There is a wounded blackness in his eyes, something deep and long-running. That thing within Spock flutters and chokes again, and he doesn’t even stop himself from feeling it, because it is Jim’s, and he wants everything that is Jim’s. 

“You...well. The _proximity_ , Spock,” Kirk says, gesturing to the bed. “That doesn’t make you uncomfortable, too? I would think that you, of all people, would find sharing a bed this narrow with another body to be...uncomfortable.” 

Spock shakes his head and steps towards Kirk because this, this is closer still to the right question. “Perhaps I would find the proximity with another body uncomfortable,” he says, cocking his head to the side, looking for what else he means, too. _But not yours_ seems too much, too personal. “I believe you and I have resided more closely than this in the past, however.” 

He’s not sure what he’s referring to. He knows with certainty, however, that he has been closer to Kirk, because he know’s he’s been close enough to see his eyelashes in each of their individual solitude. He knows he’s been close enough to feel Kirk’s exhalations on his cheek, his ear, his mouth, on some much-dwelled upon occasion. He’s been close enough to smell Kirk’s smell, to see the quick, human pulse flicker just under his jaw. 

“Resided more closely...” Kirk looks down, rakes a hand through his hair, forcing it to stand at attention at the crown of his head. “Only very briefly, Mr. Spock. Touching, talking. But this, this is _sleeping_ , in the same bed.” Kirk holds his hands out as he does when he is trying to prove something. 

Spock takes a very deep breath and says, “It does not make me uncomfortable.” 

He thinks that this is as close to a confession as he’s ever come. He thinks, very momentarily, that this may be the statement that causes Kirk to revaluate every assumption he’s ever made, and start seeing Spock as a truth rather than a fiction. 

Then Kirk says, “I suppose that’s because you don’t think of the things two people sharing a bed could do.” His voice is more tired than it is sad or cold, but there are hints of those ghosts within it. “We should drop the subject, Spock. As I said before, there’s nothing to be done about it.” 

Spock is quiet for a moment, but he finds he is not satisfied. Not with anything. Not with Kirk’s misconception of him, not with the space that yawns between them that doesn’t _have_ to exist. So he speaks. “Jim, why is it that you assume I do not think about sex?” 

And he has Kirk’s attention again, that and the energy pulled so tautly between them it is a real, physical, breakable thing like glass. Kirk’s eyes are narrowed, his head tilted ever so slightly as if he’s worried he hasn’t heard Spock right, and what he does next is dependent upon it. These are words he is not expecting from Spock. Most notably, _Jim_ and sex separated by so few syllables. “Pardon?” He says softly. 

“You assume, quite often, that I do not think about sex, and the symbols or situations that could suggest it. I am asking why.” 

“That’s what I thought you said,” Kirk says, and stands. He begins to pace the length of the room, which he does when he thinks he’s onto something. “I suppose I assume you don’t think of sex because you’re a Vulcan. And because you make it very clear that you’re not interested in it.” 

“I am sorry if I have given you that impression,” Spock says, clearing his throat, choosing his words very carefully. It’s maddening to watch Kirk move around him like a moon in orbit; he wants badly to stride across the room, close the distance, and catch the Captain by the shoulders and say _you were wrong, and I am quite in love with you_. It seems imperative that he waits, however, so he clenches his hands into a knot in front of him. “It is true that sex, as a general topic, is not something I speak of frequently. Your assumption was logical.” 

A beat of expectant silence hangs between them, and Kirk stops in his tracks, an intensity lining and creasing his face. “But?” 

“But it was incorrect,” Spock whispers. 

This is the moment when it first hits Kirk that they are not speaking generally, but about one another. Spock watches the realization slide over Kirk’s face like light, a bright, amber hue coloring his eyes and a parting to his lips like he wants to take something between them. “Spock,” he says, like he’s just only seen him. 

“Captain.” 

“But...on Vulcan.” _On Vulcan_ is the way they both refer to Spock’s koon-ut-kal-if-fee, because it is not a thing to be spoken about any other way. Kirk is, of course, making sure. He is making sure that this is a matter of specifics, and that the specific is _him_. He’s stepping closer to Spock, but not close enough to touch. 

“Pon Farr is a function of biology,” Spock says through tight lips. “There is shame because it cannot be avoided. It is out of our control. Pon Farr is much more than sex.” 

“Are you saying there is no shame in _just_ sex?” Kirk asks in disbelief. Spock can feel an astonished tremor coming from him, the result of restraining potential euphoria. Spock wants to relieve him of it, he wants to pull their bodies flush and press their mouths together and suck the fear out of Kirk’s throat. 

“No, I am not,” Spock admits, because as long as he has feels, there will always be shame. He swallows, thinks, and then: “I am merely saying that you think this cannot happen, Jim, but it can,” Spock says, and his voice cracks and frays until it is nearly nothing. 

Instantly, Kirk is across the divide and holding onto Spock’s shoulders with such desperate force that they stagger a bit, moving together. There is still space between them, because Kirk’s elbows are locked and he is holding Spock at arm’s length. “You knew. You _knew_ , this whole time?” 

“I did not know,” Spock whispers, palms rising to flatten themselves on Kirk’s heaving chest, where a heartbeat hammers and lungs expand and contract . He can feel Kirk’s breath on his lips, again, and he inhales, wanting all of Jim inside him “I only hoped.” 

Kirk makes a broken noise, and his hands move, shaking things which palm roughly up Spock’s body until they are on either side of his face, holding him there, immobilized. “You should have...God, you should,” But then he laughs, and Spock’s fists close over his wrists tight enough to reduce the things inside to blood and bone dust. 

They’re kissing, and Spock has no memory of ever having done this before. He knows it’s happened, but not like this. Not while he was in his full and rightful mind, not when he was operating on his own, uninfluenced will. Not when he was in love. 

Kissing feels like the desert drinking. It feels like every single dry, dead fissure in his body is being filled; it feels like he has never breathed before and only just realized he was suffocating. Kirk’s lips are warm and soft, his tongue a broad, confident, sweeping force against his teeth, the roof of this mouth. He knows Kirk has kissed many, many mouths, but the hungry, graceless way they are kissing now is free of thought or skill or anything save for want, which means it is pure, which means it is truth, which means it is logical. 

Spock is nearly crying out into the kiss, because he has never felt more perfect in his own body. 

They are pressed flush and yearning, Kirk’s hands rucking Spock’s science blues up over his stomach, his chest, so that his hands can rove and his nails can find purchase. Spock’s own hands are everywhere. In Kirk’s hair, working handfuls of it messily in every direction. Under Kirk’s waistband so he can grip the tense muscles of his ass with greedy palms. 

“Fuck,” Kirk says, pulling away to breathe, eyes wild and obsidian. The word sends tendrils of lust-pain into Spock’s gut, the crassness of it, the amazed, broken tone. 

“Jim,” he growls. “I have wanted this. I _needed_ it. You are everything.” The words don’t make sense, but they make Kirk tilt his head back and let out an animal sound like the response to an answered prayer. 

“You are incredible,” He breathes, dragging his nails down on either side of Spock’s back, kissing whatever he can reach with a wet, parted mouth. “I cannot believe you want this.” 

Spock has never wanted something with such certainty in his life. He shakes his head, not believing that something could feel so right, that another’s skin could feel so much more perfect to inhabit than his own. He wants to crawl inside Kirk’s body. He prefers it infinitely to his own. He wants to assume Kirk into himself. He wants to swallow him whole. 

Dizzy, he realizes he’s dropping to his knees, mouth wet and open along the inseam of Kirk’s black uniform pants. He can feel Kirk’s erection against his cheek, the weight and the heat of it, and he realizes with a shocking clarity that he never formally admitted to himself within his own mind that he wanted to do this to Kirk, but he _does_. He has for a long time. 

“Jim,” he murmurs again, loving the way Kirk’s hands are buried and tugging in his hair, wanting the pain from it, wanting all pain. Spock’s fingers are long and fumbling and clumsy on the button and zipper, but in moments he is pulling Kirk’s hard dick out of his pants, distantly aware of the mechanics of such an act, but operating purely out of want. 

“Look at me,” Kirk chokes out, his thighs clenching under the hand Spock is not using to guide the head of his dick into his mouth, tongue already prodding experimentally at the wet, salty slit. It is an easy thing to do, to tilt his chin up and lock his pupil-heavy eyes on Kirk’s, but it almost hurts him to feel Kirk’s gaze, the weight of the hunger, the awe. It strikes him in that moment that he cannot actually share Kirk’s body, but they _can_ meld. He can share his mind. His gut twists and pulls at this thought, locks in and on and around the perfect, pure, moved absolute that resides in Kirk’s eyes. 

His lips slide along the length of Kirk’s cock, the skin damp and musky and silk-soft over steel-hard and there is nothing about this he doesn’t want. Kirk’s fingers curl in his hair, pull him off before pushing him back down again, slowing his pace. “I could come right now,” he explains in a pained voice. 

And because he intends to spend all night and the rest of his life finding out all of the different ways he can do this, Spock lashes his tongue, sucks hard, bobs his head, speeds everything up. He has time to do it again, many times, but right now he wants to be filled. Kirk comes and nearly topples over, making no sound but twitching and shuddering between Spock’s lips as Spock swallows, and swallows, and thinks absurdly that there is nothing more logical than the purity of need. 

They sway towards the bed, and Kirk drops first, quickly followed by Spock still on his knees, mouth flushed and swollen as he climbs in beside him. 

Kirk is panting, sweaty and still half in his clothes, toned arm tossed across his eyes. “I never thought it would be like this,” he says in a ragged voice. “ You are so sure.”

Spock holds Kirk down, pinning him to the cot with his shoulders, pushing the green uniform up over his stomach so that he can _feel_ him with a wide, open palm, feel the tight, twitching hardness of his obliques, the shuddering expanse of his abdomen, and up between the planes of his ribcages. “I am quite sure,” he tells Kirk, latching his mouth onto a tendon in his neck and sucking a red mark into golden skin. 

“How can you be so sure,” Kirk marvels, canting his hips up and against Spock, his spent dick wet and warm through the fabric of Spock’s regulation trousers. “I thought it could never happen, but when I did dream, I never dreamed it would be like this. I thought I would have to convince you. I thought you would not let yourself want it.” 

“I tried,” Spock admitted, pressing the length of his body against Kirk’s. “But I did want it. I do want it. And it was illogical to try and convince myself of something that was not true.” 

Kirk shakes his head, eyes becoming half-lidded and thick with darkness. “I cannot explain to you what it does to me to hear you say that.” 

Spock thumbs apart Kirk’s lips, kisses his bared teeth, bites the tip of his tongue. “You do not have to.” 

“God, let me touch you,” Kirk breathes, struggling under the pressure of Spock’s body. “I want so badly to make you come.” 

Spock flinches, releases Kirk so that he can struggle out of his pants. As his hands graze his own skin, he feels a cold pang of disgust worming its way into his solar plexus. Kirk is about to touch him, and he has never been touched in that way before. He hates touching himself that way. He hates the way his body becomes desperate, he hates the way he hardens under his hand the way he is hard now, against Kirk’s body. He realizes that he would gladly spend the whole evening absorbed and absolved by Kirk’s skin, drowning, lost in it, but forgetting his own. 

Kirk’s hands are sliding over his thighs, and Spock hates that he has thighs. He hates that they exist, that they are narrow and pale and covered in hair, that they tighten and clench when he jacks himself off. He gasps, tensing, still sure about Kirk, but unsure about himself. He is so throughly repulsed by his flesh, he wonders if he can disconnect from that, and think about anything else when Kirk touches it. 

“You must let me,” Kirk murmurs into his neck, licking small, warm, perfect circles into the shuddering skin of his pulse. “Because I am as sure about this as you were about me. I have dreamt of it. I want you this way. Every way.” 

Kirk is spreading his legs, his hand huge and warm and rough closing around him and jerking upwards, sliding back down. It feels right, and Spock tries very hard to let go of the fact that Kirk is touching something he hates, and instead focus on the fact that his own body is touching something he loves. “Let me taste you,” Kirk says into his ear, a rasping wildness in his words. “Please. Spock.” 

Spock pushes Kirk’s head down before he can think about it any longer, and nearly bites a bleeding hole in his own arm when Kirk kisses the head of his cock, tongue sliding out to trace the ridges of the crown. “You are different from me,” Kirk murmurs in awe, mostly to himself. “I wondered about that,” and then he is sucking on Spock, thumbs kneading his hip flexors, tongue tracing idle patterns against the underside. 

Arching his back off the bed, Spock is shocked to find that this, too, is something he could drown in. Something he could lose himself in. That the division between their bodies, though painful like wounds unhealed and stitched inexpertly, _feels_ so intensely and overwhelmingly that any act which blurs it, any transversal from one body to another, is perfection. 

_And this is just your mouth_ , Spock thinks with a stunning clarity. He imagines being fucked by Kirk, _fucking_ Kirk, deep inside his body with his teeth buried in his shoulder while he empties himself. He thinks of that impossible heat, splitting it, being split by it. 

And then it is happening, the emptying, his spine snapping as he comes into Kirk’s mouth. 

Spock is so used to seeing stars that he doesn’t realize that they’re not in space, and these are a fiction created by his body to explain the overwhelm sprawling him limitlessly in bed. He would be gasping, but instead he is kissing Jim Kirk, and his body is no longer his own.


End file.
